Chapter 33: The Sword Pellet
The village was filled with puddles and standing water everywhere, and swords were scattered all over the ground, making it nearly impossible to set foot anywhere. The corpses strewn about added to the eerie and terrifying atmosphere.
The Village Chief surveyed the surroundings, furrowed his brow, and spoke up: "Lame, go clean this up. Prepare the bodies for burial. Don't let them rot out in the wilderness. Send them down the river. Burn some spirit money, candles, paper boats, and paper cranes for them as well."
The Lame Man limped forward, glanced at the Blind Man, and chuckled: "What a show-off, reciting poetry. And it was complete nonsense."
The Blind Man was furious, his beard bristling as he snorted: "You wouldn't even know how to recite poetry if you wanted to! You can barely read a few characters!"
Granny Si quickly interjected: "Lame, when you're preparing the bodies, make sure to keep the good stuff! Don't bury it in the coffins. It's worth something, and we can sell it next time to buy some oil, salt, vinegar, and soy sauce!"
"Got it!"
In the Great Wasteland, the most valuable things weren't gold, silver, or jewels—it was oil, salt, vinegar, soy sauce, and fine silks. These items didn't exist in the Great Wasteland; they could only be brought in by merchant caravans from the outside world to Inlaid Dragon City. The residents of the Great Wasteland would then trade rare treasures and animal hides for them. It was no exaggeration to say that a bar of salt was more expensive than gold.
Every time, Granny Si would load up a cart of treasures, bring a few pack animals to Inlaid Dragon City, sell the animals and treasures, and only then could she exchange them for some oil, salt, vinegar, and soy sauce.
The Pharmacist stepped forward to apply medicine and bandage Qin Mu's injured hand, shaking his head as he said: "Grabbing a sword with your bare hands—your primal energy isn't strong enough for that yet. Don't push yourself next time."
Qin Mu only felt a cool, numb sensation in his palm, with no pain. He said: "My sword control technique isn't good enough. I can't match the agility of that person from Li River Sect. I feel like I have plenty of strength, but I just can't unleash it."
"That's normal. That Butcher fellow's sword control is too poor to teach you anything."
The Pharmacist smiled warmly: "There's someone in our village who knows advanced sword control techniques, but unfortunately, he doesn't want to teach you."
The Village Chief's expression darkened, and he said stiffly: "Pharmacist, there's too much water here. Take me back to my house!"
The Pharmacist chuckled: "Then you'll have to wait a bit, Village Chief. I'm still bandaging Mu'er's wound."
After the wound was bandaged, Qin Mu noticed the Mute Blacksmith picking up swords from the ground. He picked up one, gave it a gentle shake, and instantly thousands of flying swords flew over on their own, clinking and clattering as they collided with the sword in the Mute's hand. To Qin Mu's amazement, all those swords vanished, merging into the single sword he held.
Qin Mu also stepped forward, picked up a sword, and gave it a gentle shake—but nothing happened.
The Mute grinned, revealing his tongueless mouth, and let out a couple of "Ah-ah" sounds. Then he rubbed the sword in his hands with both palms. To Qin Mu's astonishment, the sword shrank smaller and smaller, until in the blink of an eye, it had become a tiny silver pellet, no bigger than a fingertip.
Qin Mu looked at the sword in his own hand and thought about rubbing it too, to see if he could turn it into a small silver pellet. The Pharmacist quickly said: "Don't rub it! You just got your wound bandaged! Mute, stop teasing him, or I'll poison you to death!"
The Mute laughed heartily, snatched the flying sword from Qin Mu's hand, and then shoved the silver pellet into Qin Mu's palm.
*Crack.*
Qin Mu heard a faint sound from his shoulder, and then the weight of the pellet in his hand pressed him flat to the ground. The Mute was startled and slapped his forehead—he had forgotten that this was a sword pellet refined from thousands of swords combined. The combined weight of thousands of swords was immense.
Caught off guard, Qin Mu's arm was dislocated, and he was pinned to the ground.
Just as the Mute was about to pop Qin Mu's arm back into place, Granny Si walked over and kicked him so hard he flew out of the village, disappearing somewhere into the distance. The sound of "Ah-ah" came from beyond the village, growing fainter and fainter.
Granny Si's face darkened as she reset Qin Mu's arm, fuming: "People who can't talk are all bad seeds, full of mischief! Mu'er, these swords are mother-and-child swords. Among thousands of swords, one is the mother sword, and the rest are child swords. Once you find the mother sword, you can recall all the child swords. But the Li River Sect's sword pellet is very heavy. You can't lift it yet."
She picked up a sword and, just like the Mute, gave it a gentle shake. Thousands of precious swords flew over with a clatter, merging into the mother sword in her hand.
Granny Si smiled: "To turn the mother sword back into a sword pellet, you don't need to rub it. The Mute was just messing with you. All you have to do is merge your primal energy with the mother sword, and it will shrink back into a pellet. Similarly, you can use this method to release the child swords from the mother sword."
Qin Mu looked at the sword pellet in her palm, blinked, and asked curiously: "Grandma, there are silver pellets like this in your room, aren't there? A lot of them!"
"Are there?" Granny Si blinked her cloudy old eyes, looking puzzled.
"Yes!"
Qin Mu remembered. He had seen these silver pellets in Granny Si's room—quite a few of them. Some were thrown under the bed, others were inside shoes she no longer wore, and there were plenty in the corners as well.
When he was little, he had even used these silver pellets as marbles, rolling them around.
He had even seen Granny Si's old hen swallow one of these silver pellets like a piece of gravel!
Thinking about it now was terrifying. What if one of those silver pellets suddenly turned into a sword inside the hen's stomach? That would have been a gruesome scene.
Fortunately, that never happened.
Granny Si's eyes flickered, and she said: "When you were little, you could pick them up, so they must have been ordinary silver pellets, not sword pellets."
Qin Mu wasn't convinced: "I also saw a big box in Grandpa Mute's blacksmith shop, filled to the brim with these silver pellets."
Granny Si's cloudy old eyes blinked rapidly, even faster than Qin Mu's, and she said with a smile: "Do you think the Mute could be that rich?"
Qin Mu was a bit confused by her words. The Mute certainly didn't seem like someone with that kind of wealth. He was clearly just a poor, hardworking blacksmith.
Granny Si laughed: "Don't overthink it. Our village is full of ordinary people, all dirt-poor and broken-down. We're just a simple, normal village. Everything is perfectly normal. If you're going to suspect that the Mute's box is full of sword pellets, you might as well suspect that the water jar in the corner is some kind of treasure too!"
Qin Mu looked at the water jar she mentioned. It sat under the eaves of the blacksmith shop, used to catch rainwater. But oddly enough, Qin Mu had never seen that jar overflow, no matter how hard it rained. The water level was always halfway up the jar!
What's more, the water in the jar never decreased, and it never ran dry. The Mute used a lot of water for his blacksmithing, scooping out bucket after bucket, yet the water level never changed!
Seeing the suspicious look in Qin Mu's eyes, Granny Si realized she had made a poor example and quickly added: "You don't think that pile of broken pots outside the Pharmacist's door are treasures too, do you?"
Qin Mu looked at the broken pots outside the Pharmacist's door. They contained some unknown medicinal herbs and were home to spiders, silkworms, centipedes, and other small insects.
Just now, when the floodwaters had spread, water had gotten into the pots, and a few insects had crawled out, standing on the rims and fighting each other. Suddenly, a black spider got angry, its whole body bursting into flames. It swelled to the size of a table and started spitting fire at the other insects. In the flames, several golden silkworms grew wings, becoming over a foot long, flew out of the fire, and pounced on the spider, biting it with a squeaking sound.
The Pharmacist stuck his head out and shouted a reprimand. The insects immediately shrank back down and obediently returned to their pots.
Qin Mu grew even more suspicious. Granny Si let out a dry laugh and stammered: "This is all normal, perfectly ordinary..."
Qin Mu ventured: "Grandma, can people outside the village fly, just like Grandpa Blind?"
Granny Si nodded: "Everyone outside can fly."
Qin Mu asked: "Are they all spiritual bodies, like the people in our village?"
"They're all spiritual bodies!"
"Are people outside as powerful as the people in our village?"
"Very powerful! Otherwise, Grandma and the Blind Man wouldn't have been forced to hide in the Great Wasteland! Don't always think about running outside. You might die out there. The people outside are far more dangerous than the Blind Man!"
...
Qin Mu was half-convinced. Were people outside the Great Wasteland really as formidable as Granny Si said, capable of soaring through the heavens and penetrating the earth?
By the river, the Lame Man had finished preparing the bodies and placed them in coffins. Master Ma drove wooden pegs into the coffin lids, nailed them shut, and then pushed the coffins into the river, letting them drift downstream with the current.
The river was swift, and downstream there were many hidden reefs and jagged rocks. These coffins would have a hard time reaching the sea. They would be broken apart along the way, and the bodies would sink into the water, becoming food for the large fish in the Surging River.
"The Li River Sect might be wiped off the map from the Southern Frontier."
The Lame Man watched the departing coffins and said softly: "The sect leader is dead, and all the sect's experts are dead too. It's hard for this sect to survive."
"That's not what I'm thinking about right now."
Master Ma shook his head, looking into the distance: "What I'm thinking about is that number one under the gods. Mu Bei Feng was the prefect of the Five Miao Prefecture in the Southern Frontier, personally recruited by the Yan Kang National Teacher and appointed to the second rank. He's dead, and the Five Elders of Li River are dead too. Will this alarm that number one under the gods?"
The Lame Man shook his head firmly: "It will alarm him! But he absolutely wouldn't dare to enter the Great Wasteland!"
Master Ma glanced at him: "Don't forget, the Yan Kang National Teacher might not be able to do anything to the Great Wasteland, but behind the National Teacher is the Yan Kang Kingdom! The Yan Kang Kingdom is a massive sect disguised as a nation! How could such a behemoth not have its eyes on the Great Wasteland? This place is filled with countless treasures!"